Rudradutt Thaker

BS Major: Environmental Engineering (2020)

Arctic sea ice has been declining rapidly in recent decades due to enhanced warming, leading to increasingly intense storms in the region. Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) are narrow, transient corridors of strong horizontal water vapor transport typically associated with the cold front of an extratropical cyclone. ARs have the potential to drive sea-ice changes in the Arctic through rain and heat convergence (net sea-ice loss) or snowfall (net sea-ice gain). However, we still lack an understanding of how ARs are changing in a warming climate and the impacts of these changes on sea-ice. I am investigating ARs in the Arctic, their impacts on sea-ice, precipitation, and energy balance, and how they change in a changing climate using observations and state-of-the-art coupled climate models.

I am broadly interested in large-scale climate dynamics, atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions, and climate predictability.

May the Moisture Flux be with us!

Poster Presentation

R. G. Thaker, S. J. Vavrus, C.A. Shields, A. K. DuVivier, M. M. Holland, L. Landrum, A climatology of Arctic Atmospheric Rivers and sea-ice loss. CMM